Sasso Marconi: City of Communication. So says the welcome sign, upon entering the suburb of Pontecchio Marconi, home of the Marconi Museum, dedicated to the birth and development of radio communications.
Villa Griffone, the renowned inventor’s family home, is where Guglielmo spent much of his youth and carried out his first successful experiments with the wireless telegraph.
It was here in the so-called “silkworm room” that Marconi began experimenting with electricity at about the age of 15, and finally carried out his historic wireless communication experiment, successfully sending a signal over Celestine Hill, which faces the villa, in 1895 when he was only 21.
The park also houses part of the relic of Marconi’s yacht, Elettra, which he purchased after the war and adapted as a floating laboratory in which to carry out his experiments in telephony, or the transmission of sound and voice by means of short and medium waves.
Adjacent to the villa is the mausoleum where the remains of Marconi and his wife are held.
Inside the museum are a number of functioning, accurate reconstructions of scientific apparatuses of the 1800s located in a series of rooms, each dedicated to one of the fundamental landmarks in the history of electricity. Alongside these, the history of telecommunications in the 20th century is explained, with particular emphasis on the evolution from telegraphs to radios to broadcasting.
Today Villa Griffone is under the management of the Marconi Foundation and, in addition to the museum, is also home to two important radio communications research center.
